October 2018

Here in Colorado, we never really got a chance to experience a light frost. We went from a balmy 65 degrees on October 13th to winter with snow with temperatures in the mid teens on October 14th.
Like the changes in the weather, the NetEqualizer feature set is always evolving. In this issue we bring you the new 8.6 release, and as an added bonus a little out of-the-box thinking for the future.

We continue to work with you to solve some of your most pressing network problems – so if you have one that you would like to discuss with us, please call or email me anytime at 303.997.1300 x103 or art@apconnections.net.

8.6 is now available for everyone!

No needles we promise! The upgrade process for 8.6 requires running a couple of commands from the GUI and then a single reboot. Worst case you should expect a 30 second service outage.

What is in 8.6?

Perhaps you missed our internal review back in August when we were testing. Here are the details of the main 8.6 features. You can also read our full 8.6 Release Notes on our blog site at any time.

1) Scalable Time and Date for Reporting

Ever ask the question, “what was my bandwidth usage between 9:00pm and 12:00 pm last Thursday?” We now have the answer at your finger tips. Using the time and date range bar, located at the top of all our graphical reports, you can hone in on a particular time/date period – immediately rescaling the report as you move the bar. Our previous releases had fixed time periods of one day, one week, one month, etc. which was nice, but nowhere near as convenient. This was one of our most requested features.

2) Set your Priority to expire

Giving a user priority is akin to giving them permanent keys to the Fort Knox of Bandwidth. Perhaps you have a user that has a good reason for some extra bandwidth on Tuesday evening due to a business presentation; but come Wednesday you don’t wan’t their laptop with priority to accidentally go off in the middle day on a 50G backup with unlimited bandwidth, that might bring your network to a crawl. Never fear! Now, when assigning priority you can set an expiration date on your priority and avoid leaving that gate open.

3) Watch individual usage live on your screen

We have always had static reports on historical usage per IP, and now we have added a real time bar chart that updates once a second, so you can see in real time what a single IP is doing in terms of usage. I have used it while watching youtube and Netflix video, and was surprised to see how these application will consistently burst ahead to buffer up large chunks of bandwidth just by watching the usage bar jump up. I had suspected this behavior from Netflix, but it was nice to see it confirmed visually on my screen.

4) Bursting Pool/Subnet settings

People have always liked our pool/subnet shaping feature, but we often get asked by customers to relax enforcement during slack usage times. For example, if you have your guest wireless network restricted to 50 megabits on a 1G circuit on our 8.5 release, those users will never be able to go above 50 megabits. Now in 8.6, if you put a 50 megabit restriction on a group you can tell the NetEqualizer only to enforce that rule when the entire circuit is at capacity. With our 8.6 release, you have the choice of keeping the hard 50 megabit restriction in place all the time, or to only enforce this restriction during peak times.

Some interesting product ideas, just for fun…

Every once in a while we try to get out of the box and think of ideas that will stretch the imagination a little bit. Below are a couple that came to mind today. If you have a far-out idea, we’d love to hear about it. As a technology company we are always looking for ways to leap frog into new paradigms.

Site Survey Drone

I suspect others have thought of this idea and perhaps it has been implemented, so apologies in advance in case this is not an original idea.

We know that there are a variety of ways to survey areas for wireless coverage, and yet once the service is rolled out, dead spots abound. The contractor in charge must rely on reports from customers, or physically walk the site to find areas lacking in coverage. Seems like a good job for a small drone? Yes you need to a little intelligence to self navigate, and perhaps there might be little problems like closed doors (there goes the engineer in me thinking of obstacles). Bottom line is, it could be done, and could save a good bit of time and money.

Cleaning your Keyboard After a Sticky Spill

Yes I am going farther out with this one, but what if there was some service where you could hire an ant colony to clean up that sugary mess on your key board or mother board? Would ants be able to do this job effectively? The idea came to me when I saw a heard of goats being used to clear brush and noxious weeds off public right aways and roadsides. Ants are tireless workers and love sugar and people are always destroying their electronics with sticky spills.

Automatic Survey Response Application for your Phone

I get 10 robo-calls a day with operators spoofing caller ID’s. You really can’t block them because they have figured out how to come from a new number with every call, and if you do block them, you are likely blocking an innocent party, since the caller ID was hijacked. To date, the FCC seems reluctant to do anything about it. I am not sure why perhaps there is money in this traffic for the operators? Last I heard, 50 percent of outbound calls in the US is from this garbage spammed traffic.

My idea: What if you had a little intelligent application (your private Watson that understands context) on your phone that responded like a potential real customer. Here is an example interaction.

Robo-Caller: Hello this is Henry with the warranty department, did you know your 1978 Honda is not covered by warranty?

Robo-App: Wow, please tell me more!

Robo-Caller: For a simple $9.99 a month we can extend your expired manufacture’s warranty.

Robo-App: Yes I’d like to sign up…

And so on. The idea is to engage the robo-caller for as long as possible, thus wasting their time to the point where the spamming operation is no longer viable.

See for yourself.

Schedule an online demo to see if NetEqualizer is right for you.

If you like our articles, you can talk to our authors!

The Network Engineers that write our blog are available for FREE 1/2 hour consultations. Click the button to request your consult, and we will have one of our Network Engineers get back to you within 1 business day.